Best Movie Musicals Of All-Time

Want to know the best Movie Musicals?  How about the worst Movie Musicals?  Curious about  Movie Musicals box office grosses or which Movie Musicals picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Movie Musicals got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information…and alot more.

Over the years we have received many requests to do UMR pages on genres.  Besides doing a Sports movie page we have pretty much ignored those requests.  We ignored those requests because we could not figure out a way to put together a page on a whole genre. Recently we stumbled across a book called Musicals by Daniel Cohen.  In that book Cohen looked at the best of the best musicals from the 1920s to the mid 1980s.  At the end of the book was a filmography of all the movies in his book.  That seemed like a great starting point for us to finally do a UMR page on musicals. Here are rules we used when putting together our Top 100 Movie Musicals page.

(1) If Cohen listed the movie in his book…the movie made the page. (2) Although we are not really huge musical movie fans….a few of the musicals we actually like….did not make his book.  So we added our favorite musicals like Paint Your Wagon (Clint singing…. how did that not make the book?) and The Rocky Horror Picture show.  (3) Then we included movie musicals made after Cohen’s book was published.  (4) We did not include Biopics.  Yes movies like The Buddy Holly Story, Coal Miner’s Daughter and La Bamba have lots of music but almost all of it occurs on a stage or in a studio.  (5) We also did not include album movies like Purple Rain and Pink Floyd’s The Wall or most of the Disney animated classics….with the exception of Beauty and The Beast which was on every Best Musical Movie list we saw.  (6) In the end we actually ended up with way more than 100 movies….279 to be precise.  So since we researched them….we figured we would include them here on this UMR page.  (7) Can’t find a musical on the table?  If it was before 1984….it is not our fault….you have to blame Daniel Cohen.  If the movie is made after 1984….then we will take the blame.  BUT….leave a comment detailing the missing movie…..and we will include it.  Enjoy!

Our UMR Musicals By Year

 

Top Movie Musicals Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Movie Musicals by the stars of the movies
  • Sort Movie Musicals by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Movie Musicals by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Movie Musicals how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Movie Musicals movie received.
  • Sort Movie Musicals by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Use the search and sort button to make this table very interactive.
 

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Movie Musicals Table

  1. 194 Movie Musicals crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 69.53% of the movies listed. The Sound of Music (1965) was the biggest box office hit.
  2. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  224 of Movie Musicals are rated as good movies…or 80.28% of the movies.  Singin’ in the Rain (1952) is the highest rated movie while At Long Last Love (1975) is lowest rated movie.
  3. 168 Movie Musicals received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 60.21% of the movies.
  4. 66 Top Movie Musicals won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 23.65% of the movies.
  5. An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00. 235 Movie Musicals scored higher that average….or 84.22% of the movies. West Side Story (1961) got the the highest UMR Score while At Long Last Love (1975) got the lowest UMR Score.
Julie Andrews has 3 of the best reviewed musicals in the Top 30
Julie Andrews has 3 of the best reviewed musicals in the Top 30

Possibly Interesting Facts About Top 100 Musicals

1. The combined adjusted domestic box office gross for these 279 movies is $48.67 BILLION!

2. The 279 movies on this table received 573 Oscar® nominations.

3. The 279 movies on this table won 146 Oscars®.

4. 34 of these movies received Best Picture Oscar® nominations

5. 8 of these movies won the Best Picture Oscar®.

6.  The Great Ziegfeld (1936), An American in Paris (1951), Gigi (1958), West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), Oliver! (1968) and Chicago (2002) are the 8 Best Picture Oscar® winners.

 

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.  Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.  Emmy® is a registered trademark.

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1 thought on “Best Movie Musicals Of All-Time”

  1. I cannot find “Love Me Tonight” (1932) on the list. The musical with songs by Rodgers and Hart and starring Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald and Myrna Loy is generally considered to be one of the most original and innovative musicals of all time.

    Reply

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